Fix Conky Transparency Issue!
Conky is a lightweight system monitor that displays information on your desktop. There are a number of variations and designs that will show anything from the date and weather to how much hard disk space you are using. Conky doesn’t actually use real transparency so it may not look easy on the eye. This simple tutorial will help make Conky look more aesthetically pleasing.
Step 1
Install Conky from synaptic package manager or by opening up the terminal and typing
1 | sudo apt-get install conky |
There is no point starting conky just yet as it comes with a basic interface so lets spice things up a little.
Step 2
I installed a theme that was on a blog post Try This Great Looking Conky Lua Configuration For Ubuntu, Fedora Or Linux Mint. Follow the steps described in the blog post which creates 2 new hidden folders and a copies a file into your home directory. Please note other Conky configurations and designs may differ so this may not work for everybody.
Step 3
Now that you have installed Conky we are going to create a script to run Conky and also fix the transparency issue that you may have. First and foremost install a little program called feh.
1 | sudo apt-get install feh |
Now go to your home directory, right click on an empty space and go to Create Document -> Empty File. Name it start_conky.sh, open it with your text editor and enter the following.
1 2 3 | #!/bin/bash feh --bg-scale ~/.themes/background.png sleep 30 && conky |
Change the path to your existing desktop wallpaper as you can see mine is in my .themes folder. Now we have to make the file executable. The easiest way is to right click on the start_conky.sh and select Properties. Go to the Permissions tab and make sure that the Allow Executing File as Program is checked as in the screenshot below. 
All we have to do now is ensure that we set our start_conky.sh file to start automatically when our computer starts. For this open up Startup Applications click Add then Browse in the command section and point it to start_conky.sh that you have just created. Enter Conky in the Name section and fill in the Comment section if you wish. Close and restart your computer and Conky should start with a fixed transparent background.